[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 72 (Friday, June 10, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 10, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                MORE STORIES FROM THE NORTHERN FRONTIER

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                       HON. SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, June 10, 1994

  Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Speaker, I believe that sacrifices by pioneers and 
their Oneida Indian allies on the northern frontier of central New York 
during the struggle for independence are not well known or understood.
  That is unfortunate. These stories are rich in heroism and 
cooperation between cultures.
  In a time when we really need to reflect on the values and 
partnerships which made our country great, these stories, as told by 
author Robert Moss of Troy, NY, are invaluable.
  They will lend to greater national pride, education, and 
understanding. They will teach us how our ancestors survived and 
thrived under very difficult conditions, so that we may be free today. 
They will also make us more determined to secure that freedom for the 
future.
  Last fall, Robert Moss addressed a town meeting I held in Herkimer, 
NY, sponsored by the Northern Frontier Project and Herkimer College for 
citizens and students interested in the history and culture of central 
New York. Here are excerpts from his speech.

       Robert Moss: Let me pursue the general themes a little 
     further. First of all, this is where the decisive encounter 
     took place between Native American and whites, and as I say, 
     thanks to the quality of leadership on both sides, this was 
     for a time a unique success story in terms of relations 
     between an immigrant group and the native population. On the 
     white side that success story has a lot to do with Sir 
     William Johnson, who became a great protector of the 
     Iroquois, and on the Indian side, it had a great deal to do 
     with the personal caliber of Iroquois leadership up until the 
     time of the American Revolution, which I'll come to in a 
     moment when the confederacy falls apart and loses its 
     compass.
       This is one sense in which America was born on the Northern 
     Frontier. A second sense in which America was born here is 
     this: This is where the first mass immigration of people from 
     the old world took place. Some of you may be descended from 
     them. The Palatine German refugees who came, two or three 
     thousand of them in the year 1710, the same year the ``four 
     kings'' went to London, was the largest single influx of 
     white immigrants to North America that had ever taken place. 
     They fan out up through the Hudson Valley, through Mohawk 
     Valley, some of them go onto Pennsylvania. With this tide we 
     begin to see emerging the multi-culture, multi-ethnic society 
     that America has gone on to become.
       The stories of these pioneers are rich in heroism against 
     the odds, rich in the simple heroism of surviving day by day 
     in first growth forest which had never heard a metal axe, on 
     the edge of the wilderness with raiding parties from French 
     Canada coming down, with the wolves and bears homing in for 
     something to eat, in winters so cold that the ink froze in 
     the ink wells, and the Madeira or rum, if they could run to 
     it, froze in the keg in the cellar, and the bread had to be 
     chopped with hatchets. Rich in stories of survival. Better 
     than the stories you learn in ``Little House on the 
     Prairie.'' Stories that deserve to be told and retold.
       There is a third sense in which this is where America was 
     born. This is where the war for independence was won, or 
     lost, according to your point of view. The Battle of Saratoga 
     was a turning point. The year 1777 means a lot around here, 
     or ought to. It was the year of a second failed British 
     operation involving the Battle of Oriskany, and a very clever 
     piece of psychological warfare mounted by the great American 
     patriot leader Benedict Arnold, shortly after the Battle of 
     Orinskany.
       Let me focus on this for a moment, I'll just underscore the 
     general point before I give you a couple of vignettes to take 
     you into the scene of a battle that took place just down the 
     road here. The American Revolution was won or lost in the 
     year 1777 in the Mohawk Valley and at Saratoga in Upstate New 
     York because the British losses in these battles persuaded 
     the French that the Americans had a shot at winning and 
     brought the French in. And once the French came in, the 
     clock was really ticking away for the British hold on 
     North America.
       But before Saratoga, there was the Battle of Oriskany, and 
     at the Battle of Oriskany, on August 6, 1777, we see in its 
     naked savagery and brutality, the face of the first American 
     Civil War. Another phrase you might want to think about. They 
     made a wonderful movie about Gettysburg; I've rarely seen 
     Hollywood actors so deeply involved in getting inside 
     historical scenes, characters, the minutiae of their parts as 
     happened with this Ted Turner production. I hope one day of 
     doing something similar with the Battle of Oriskany. It is 
     after all, the bloodiest engagement in terms of people killed 
     within a few hours of the whole American Revolution. It took 
     place right here.
       I would like to see Hollywood do the same for this region. 
     I know I am digressing a bit, but the best conversations 
     often wander like the old Iroquois trail, that never went 
     straight. You come to a protruding root, a boulder, a rock, 
     you go around it, you don't just plow straight ahead. Getting 
     lost, for the matter, can be awfully interesting; sometime 
     the direct way is not the most magical way.
       I want to see a very good movie made about the battles of 
     the colonial and revolutionary war periods in Upstate New 
     York, in the places where these things actually happened, 
     rather than down in Blue Ridge mountains or somewhere else 
     which looks very glamorous. If you have seen ``Last of the 
     Mohicans,'' it looks sort of plausible, but we have the 
     Adirondacks, we have the sites, why not use them?
       The force the British sent to Oriskany was part of a pinch 
     movement by which the British commander hoped to split New 
     York, and so then split the American colonies. You have a 
     force including: Sir John Johnson, William Johnson's son and 
     heir; Joseph Brant, Tory Mohawk, war leader of redoubtable 
     fame and notoriety; and led by Barry St. Leger, a hard 
     drinking bottle man, who was slaying wine and rum in 
     quantities that even William Johnson, who liked to tipple 
     himself, would have found stupendous in the course of 
     warfare. Here they are marching down toward Fort Stanwix, and 
     they hoped to take it without much of a fight, because they 
     had been misinformed about the strength of Stanwix and the 
     resolution of its defenders.
       Fort Stanwix had very good officers, (Col. Peter) 
     Gansevoort and (Col. Marinus) Willett, good soldiers; they've 
     prepared their position. They've got more men than the 
     British expected. On the British side you've got, basically, 
     an Iroquois Indian fighting force. The Iroquois are coming 
     into the revolution now. And they're coming in ways that they 
     hadn't necessarily planned and calculated on thoroughly. The 
     Senecas are just being brought in as a result of a meeting 
     with John Butler up near Rochester, at Irondequoit, where a 
     lot of rum was drunk and the Senecas are taking the war path 
     without firelocks, without guns, just with spears, and war 
     clubs, and so on. And you have a relief party being sent post 
     haste under Nicholas Herkimer, who gives this community his 
     name. Interesting family, the Herkimer's to relieve the now 
     beleaguered garrison at Fort Stanwix surrounded by the Indian 
     and Tory fighting force commanded by St. Leger.
       You probably know what happened, it happened down the road. 
     It's worth having a look at the site. One of the Indian names 
     for the site of the Battle of Oriskany is ``the place where 
     the road is submerged.'' The place where the road goes under 
     the water. In those marsh lands, in that ambush, in that 
     bloody encounter in the forest, more men died in the space of 
     a couple of hours than I believe died in any other engagement 
     in the course of the American Revolution. About 200 on the 
     patriot side, a much smaller number on the Tory and Indian 
     side. And old Nicholas Herkimer bled to death. I don't have 
     time to take you thought the whole story. The point I want to 
     make: When you look at what is going on here, you see the 
     face, the savage face, of civil war.
       Here's old General Herkimer, leading the relief column to 
     Stanwix. Here with a Tory force, is his brother, John 
     Herkimer, who was an officer of the Indian Department, and 
     the man charged with clearing Wood Creek so the British 
     could get their forces along it. You take family by 
     family, you find there is a brother fighting on the other 
     side, not just with the whites but with the Indians, and 
     personal tragedies were involved in all of this. Here is 
     Joseph Brant, the famed or notorious Joseph Brant. On the 
     Oneida side, and the Oneidas are marching with Americans, 
     is Brant's former father-in-law, the father of his first 
     wife, old Skenandon, who is an adopted Oneida, a very 
     brave war chief, a respected politician, now in his 
     seventies, who lived to be one hundred and ten, who is won 
     over to the American side by his relationship with a 
     Presbyterian missionary, Samuel Kirkland.
       Here is Herkimer, facing his brother. Here is Joseph Brant, 
     facing his former father-in-law. This is a doorstep war, as 
     one person once called such things. There is nothing as 
     savage as a civil war, nothing really perhaps as fascinating 
     in terms of the storm of personal interest, emotions, 
     loyalties, ideologies that became engaged. This is a story to 
     be relived, honored without false partisanship. We can tell 
     in a truthful way now, there are villains and heroes on both 
     sides. On that the question of villains and heroes, the real 
     victor of Oriskany, where the field of battle, although held 
     by the Americans at the end of the engagement, really, really 
     belonged to the British, because they'd done most of the 
     killing.
       The real victor of this campaign in the Mohawk Valley was 
     Benedict Arnold. Marching with an American relief column, too 
     few to overwhelm the British, who'd just cut up the Americans 
     on the field of battle, but smart enough, wily enough--
     Benedict was always clever to use a psychological warfare 
     trick to send false information by two different runners to 
     the British so they'd be confused about the size of his 
     column. Arnold used a mental defective (according to some of 
     the accounts), a captive Tory, to take one of the messages 
     doubling the size of his force so the British would think 
     that they were about to be overwhelmed. Then he used an 
     Oneida Indian to take another message telling the British, 
     John Johnson in particular, but he had three thousand men 
     instead of the nine hundred he had with him. The British 
     commander was sozzled, scared, confused. He simply cut and 
     run, left his tents, left his stores and gave the Americans 
     the victory they hadn't earned on the battlefield, but earned 
     through cleverness. Another story from the frontier.
       Such stories need to be told and retold, generation to 
     generation. They're worth honoring, they're worth telling in 
     ways that reach people and touch their hearts, set their 
     hearts beating a little faster. They're relevant to you and 
     me today, because they're stories about what it means to be a 
     human being: what it means to survive and thrive under very 
     difficult conditions. Choices of family versus greater causes 
     that come up in the course of one's life. This is why history 
     is worth studying. I believe that these are the stories that 
     will fulfill Congressman Boehlert's very worthy ambition to 
     bring the right kind of tourism to this area in spectacular 
     ways.
       I think it can be spectacular. Some of you have been to 
     Civil War sites, from the second American Civil War. Some of 
     you have been to Gettysburg, or to Manassas, and so on, and 
     you've seen the kinds of crowds that come. The population of 
     America was a little bit smaller in the 18th century than it 
     was in the nineteenth, but this is where the United States 
     itself was conceived. At Fort Stanwix the stars and stripes 
     were unfurled for the first time in American history, three 
     days before the Battle of Oriskany. This is a pretty big drum 
     to beat, and it can be heard from one corner of this 
     continent to another. Canadians are also passionately 
     interested in these things. I am constantly impressed by the 
     number of travellers who come from every part of the world to 
     sites like Johnson Hall: Japanese, Germans, Australians. 
     Sometimes they seem to know more about local history than the 
     locals. There is nothing all that surprising about that; 
     sometimes it takes a newcomer or an outsider with a freshness 
     of vision to see things which are quite obvious but which 
     people living right next door to a national treasure like 
     Johnson Hall or other sites we've mentioned, have stopped 
     thinking about or don't understand in terms of living 
     history.
       Again, ``History may be servitude, history may be 
     freedom.'' I certainly think that this history, which 
     contains some most exciting stories in the history of this 
     nation, is going to be a powerful magnet for interested 
     people from all over this country and from further-a-field.

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